Area Damage

Area Damage, AoE Damage, or Area of Effect Damage is an important quality of damage in AstroFlux. AoE Damage hits multiple targets in a certain area. This area almost always takes the form of a radius from a central point (e.g. a circular area). It's a valuable tool for rapidly farming resources which drop from enemies by fighting many of them at once. It's also valuable in PvP situations, either because "almost is good enough" for mines and large explosions, or because players will intelligently form alliances and gang up on their enemies.

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PBAoE

The PB in PBAoE can refer to "Player-Based", or also "Point Blank." The area, in this case, is defined as originating from the person that caused it. In some games, PBAoE is used to gather mobs around or get their attention for tanking or kiting. PBAoE attacks typically have extremely limited range and encourage close combat.
The Nuke Launcher and Horror Nuke possibly can be seen as a PBAoE weapon, but they do have charge capability and can be launched a short distance.

Currently there are two PBAoE weapons: Energy Nova and Algae Nova Gland. With this weapon it is beneficial to stack yourself on top of or just behind the target, as enemies near the edge of the blast radius take less damage. Energy Nova is not useful as a primary weapon in PvP, but it is useful because it destroys any missiles that hit it. As a farming weapon, Energy Nova isn't the most useful due to its high energy consumption. Essentially, the Energy Nova is a great secondary or tertiary weapon.

Damage Zones

Damage Zones are used for battle control. They can vary from steady damage over time in an area, to latent, single-burst damage. They can reduce the chaos of a battlefield since intelligent enemies will tend to avoid damage, making their movements more predictable and, depending on the placement of the zone, more favorable to the player.

There are currently two battles control weapons, being Mine Launcher and Spike Strip. These are both "dormant" single-burst AoE weapons. Mine Launcher takes 3 seconds to activate, Spike Strip arms instantly.

Non-player enemies do not avoid Damage Zones in AstroFlux, but some of them will place them, also in the form of mines.

Cone AoE

While a common type of AoE, cone damage is noticeably absent from the game. This type of damage is a blast where the area is a triangle or cone extending from the front of the player and expanding outwards. In AstroFlux, this is accomplished instead with multiple-projectile weapons like Plasma Gun, the Noxium BFG, and/or POSSIBLY the Death Cloud. (The Death Cloud is an area damage cloud that moves away from the tank at slow speeds, possibly meriting the title of an AoE Cone weapon.) These weapons are all made up of multiple shots. The Death Cloud is multiple damage points, and the same with the Noxium BFG.

Targeted AoE

The vast majority of AoE in the game is some form of projectile, missile, or bomb launched from the ship.

While lacking a well-defined circular area, chain attacks hit multiple targets which are physically near each other, and so these can be considered a form of AoE. Because in AstroFlux these types of attacks do not fire and waste energy unless there is a first target to hit, and because there is a large degree of auto-aiming freedom, these are great tools for farming and leveling.